RitualOfTheTrout

It's maddening how Allegheny is always on the fringe, just to far North for those Southern systems, but not far enough north for good LES or fighting the warm tongue. Pivot that qpf another 25-50 miles and we could score a solid 4 inches. It's always a game of inches with storms I know, but always seems that is were the cutoff sets up one way or the other. Kuchera maps are probably better bet given we should be at 15:1 - 20:1 ratios vs those generic 10:1 maps.

1-2 seems reasonable. Ratios should be good to maximize what we get qpf wise. It does seem like the trend has been very tiny increments of improving as we get closer. If that continues maybe we can bump up to 2-4. Little sarcasm there. I feel like I've put a lot of energy into tracking this. Cold snow on snow in the teens and 20s is hard to beat in my book so I'll take what I can get.

Looks like 1-2 inches here overnight. Hard to tell for sure with the blowing, but at least as much on the ground as the storm last weekend. Another batch overhead now.

I agree, traffic after one of the events is a nightmare in good weather. Can you imagine how many people would get stuck? 3ft snow and 65mph winds, cars might be drifted over in the lot. You know there'd be some contingent of woefully unprepared fans too.

Temp is dropping pretty quickly now, lat or near freezing. Looks like an area of light snow moving through shortly.

We basically said the same thing. I fall into that trap myself sometimes, looking ahead on the models you get in your head January is over, but in reality it's only half way through. Plenty of time for something to come up in the medium or short range too. Sure you can identify favorable longwave patterns from 10-14 days out for when a storm might come together, but in reality its rare a storm past 7 days happens as modeled from that range.

Honestly, to put a positive spin on it, rooting for the first wave to be the focus and come in stronger is our best hope to steal a few inches. Thats been the trend, this is more of a Monday night "event" now because of that. I wouldn't totally dismiss the end of week storm either. We need the NS to dig deeper and get the storm going below us. Still to many variables to write anything off. After that, the cold look breaks down, but late Jan / early Feb still looks like we will have a reload of a workable pattern. By then a "great" winter is off the table if we fail to that point, but a good storm or two and getting close to average not out of the question. Backloaded winter given Nino climo was always the expectation.

GFS moved to Euro, CMC seems headed that way too.

Not a great day in general for snow chances. Hopefully we have some good changes tonight. Looking like an all out blizzard for the game at Buffalo. Can't imagine those snow rates with the Arctic air fetch over record warm lake Erie.

Agree. Usually a compromise / blend of guidance works best. Just depends if we are like 60/ 40 GFS camp or Euro. If its Euro we won't be as happy. That said watch Euro come in with some phased bomb now.

If you want snow you generally don't want severe cold anyways. Not much clarity overnight, same possibilities still on the table from medium impact snowfall to nothing. All the ops and ens suites seem to be ocilating within that goal post still.

It is odd they switched places, hopefully not a case of GFS being late to catch on. Thanks for the analysis, haven't looked at the overall pattern vs trends. Will be good to watch that BC LP for early hints on 00z runs.

Its certainly not like it used to be, if it was the Euro vs everything else you could still weight it 70 / 30 Euro. GFS is way improved now, so at least a reason to be optimistic. The other good thing, if the GFS is more right, we have room for an earlier phase / more amped solution.

That's about the only certainty you can get from 12z. Pretty much all solutions from medium impact snowfall to nothing. Glad I don't have to bet on this cause I don't know which way I'd go. I wouldn't say dire straights. That might not be a super warm look, and signs the blocking wants to reload. I get your point though, by then we are entering the last 3rd of winter needing some big wins to hit climo.

Pretty chaotic with all the shortwaves in play, honestly pretty low ROI tracking right now, at least until the big midwest low does it's thing. Just glancing at the different runs at 500 there are some pretty big run to run changes. It is a weather discussion board though, so if your here, what else are you going to do right?

I agree, I think we are all but assured to have suppressive flow for the MLK threat. I was really hoping we didn't go from two massive midwest blizzards to a sheared out mess, so hopefully the second option comes to fruition and we get some phasing. It would be nice to get a couple inches on the ground to go with the cold.

Flow behind the big cutter not a trajectory to get us LES, more west or south west. Buffalo NWS talking maybe big LES event, so we can watch it snow on TV during the Steelers game at least.

I'm wondering if after this next cutter we get some better snow action on the back-end with some true arctic air coming in over very warm lake waters if we can get a favorable trajectory and a little embedded shortwave to help mix things up. Storm after is till on the Euro, and GFS seems to be at least showing the possibility of something in the same time frame too.

Yeah, and today's system will on the way out too.

You mean -NAO? Pretty beefy ridge over Greenland there. Biggest issue I see is that beast of TPV lobe just under Hudson bay. That is going to make it hard for anything to amplify without get shredded. Lift that north or further east and you have some room for something to dig and amplify then run into that and get pushed east before it can cut west of us.

Which storm are you talking about and why are you saying that? Guessing the Tuesday storm after the Friday / Saturday deal? Still too early to say one way or the other with several features that won't be resolved for awhile. Starting to think for the next one best we can hope for is similar to what we got today. Quick front end thump, although there isn't a high in as favorable of spot either, it's sliding off the coast on approach and the low center may be closer to us, which would in theory boost WAA. Getting to short of lead time for a big shift SE at this point, unless the idea of jumping to the coast comes back.

Nah, Tidbits had 6z / 18z Euro free, albeit delayed out to 90. Your'e good.

That's why I'm not ready to toss that one out as a rainy cutter, it has a better shot of at least being a redeveloper, and we should have a little better cold to work with ahead of it.

Same, I'm really surprised to see it switch back to snow, that almost never happens once we go to rain.

I'm not ready to toss out the storm this weekend, still has a shot to be weaker / further SE, maybe front end to slop type setup. Next storm after is probably better shot as we start to get some ridging in the west and cold air can come east along with the storm track. Good to see the MJO is flying through the bad phases. Should keep any negative effect minimal and set us up for a reload in Feb. Seems like we have some dice rolls, whether we hit on any who knows. Still better than last year at least having hope and interesting stuff to track. Now to go put some bricks in my garbage cans before the wind storm.